Elvin's tables

for my oh-so-many kids

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we were trying to stop the winter--

The world seems to have shattered.

He cannot see it but he can sense it. He can feel it, a tingle in the tips of his toes – a silent little falter like a touch of cold in the center of his chest. It’s as if he is falling, as if he is constantly on the ledge of reality, as if his knees are about to buckle and he might tip nose-first into oblivion.

Darkness haunts the edges of his vision even as electricity sparkles bright and blue upon the lines of his cheeks, against the points of his shoulders. It had been ill-fought, complicated and strange for him to understand even as it had sought to appropriate him as its newest master. It is complex magic, passed to him through subtle bloodlines, and yet he had not been aware of it. For all the protection it offers, he cannot help but grasp it with apprehension, with frustration.

(Where had it been when he had led Elowen to her death? Where had it been when he had wished harm upon his mentor?)

But he hadn’t been ready… he had tried. He had listened as Elspeth taught him. And it had humored her – the magic had twisted easily, binding like a happy hound. It wound around his limbs, lighted upon his flanks, dangled from his chest like a careful chain. He had thought it marvelous, something important and grand, while it had adopted its new host with ease.

The Spark had awoken. Its host, too young, could not comprehend what it needed. To bear the Spark is to bear the breath of strength, the light of bravery, the power of a savior. Sancti, while perhaps eventually capable, had not been properly readied.

So as he wanders, as the darkness edges in like cracks on glassware, he can only feel a bizarre sense of optimism embattled by utter sorrow. He wants to fight, but he knows it is hopeless. He sees light, but there is darkness dulling his eyes. He cannot bear to be the vessel of something he cannot even recognize.

He struggles there among the darkening trees, against the sound of rocks crumbling to dust against one another. It’s like the world is ending but he cannot run from it; it’s like he’s floating but he has no wings. Something clutches around his breast, holding him back, and yet something seems to pull him forward, so he draws ever onward through the gnarled roots of the Faeforest he might once have become infatuated with.

(What is that, the strange melody that weeps through the boughs? The lament of brittle fingers which might once have steadied his uncertainty, if not for their now-brusque withering?)

To the base of his throat he clutches a golden acorn. It glows ever so faintly, a delicate little thing that still brings him hope, a tiny piece of what-could-have-been. The warmth it had once borne is fading quickly and he does not even realize that the coldness of its husk brings tears to his eyes as he bows his head in silence.

He is far from the edges of Teloria, his blue coat mingling easily with the gloomy shadows of the woods far beyond the last few golden lights of the quieting city. There comes another twine against his heart, another bite upon his lip, as he feels some other piece of the world flee from him. Where might it go, he wonders as he catches the toe of a hoof against a root.

He stumbles to his knees and sighs, dropping his haunches as well. Struggling seems so impertinent now, so much like the childish notion of fighting sleep.

Yet, he looks up with his wet copper eyes in the hope that, maybe, he might find someone out here suffering with him.

Sancti

art by dall-e

v

the most frightening monsters
are the ones that lurk within our souls;

Lyrith was born under a shadow that none could see but him. From his earliest memories, he was plagued by the voices and whispers of spirits – ghosts from ages long past, their restless cries clawing at his mind. They spoke in riddles, in truths wrapped in lies; their constant presence left him uncertain of what was real. With an unnatural attunement to the afterlife, the spirits lost between peace and mortality plagued his every waking moment, leaving him forever doubtful and afraid. This affliction – this curse – marked him as different, an outcast in his village and even among his own family.

His skittishness and strange behavior made him a target of suspicion and fear. The spirits that haunted him manipulated his trust, whispering constant falsehoods and leading him astray, often into danger. His only solace was his mother (his father having left them long before his birth to seek service in the west), though even her patience rapidly wore thin. Desperate to quiet the torment he endured, she bound his eyes with cloth, hoping the blindness would bring him peace. But the voices persisted, and the darkness behind the wrappings only deepened his fears. Not even the charms she draped around his neck worked to ward the specters from his life.

In time, his mother could no longer bear the weight of his ailment. His constant tears, the night terrors he endured, the constant injuries incurred by either his induced blindness or by the ghostly temptations into danger, all eventually wore through whatever motherly patience she bore. One day, she led him deep into the untamed forests of Mythrandir – far from their frigid northern home at the base of the Feyrithil mountains. His only indication to the change of locale had been the change in temperature, the more brittle crackling of limbs underfoot in contrast to the familiar crunch of snow, but with his eyes still covered he had had no awareness of the distance they had traveled that terrible day. There, far from home, she abandoned him, believing the wilderness might succeed where she had failed. Alone, surrounded by the unfamiliar sounds of the wild and the ceaseless murmurs of the dead, Lyrith should have perished.

Instead, the forest welcomed him.

The fae of the Nevermere Court who dwelled within those forgotten trees found the boy intriguing. Drawn to him and his connection to the spectral world, they sought to nurture raw, untapped magic. Among them, Lyrith found a strange semblance of belonging. While they were vastly different from the elf-kin he had known his whole life thus far, they did not fear him as they had. The fae taught him to survive, to embrace the unpredictability of nature, and they encouraged the unexplored magic in his veins.

Eventually, he discovered a great devotion to the natural world around him, especially an affinity toward cervine creatures. Though the methods of the fae were unorthodox – and often unsettling – they encouraged and supported him in a way no one else had. They did not fear his visions or the voices he claimed to hear; they did not find him peculiar or bizarre. Over time, Lyrith became aligned and accepted within House Velanthris as the ruling force of the forest and its wilder denizens, thriving among them as if he had been born to one of their own from the start.

Years later, when the magician Malakar ripped open the rift to the nether and chaos spilled into the mortal world, Lyrith’s mind became even more troubled. His innate connection to the afterlife, and therefore the nether, left a great unease settled into his mind. The spirits seemed even more active, more active in their torment of him, and he frequently retreated to solitude for days on end. As other inhabitants of Myr fled their homes, some found their way into the unsettled forests – including several members of his native village.

Among these refugees was his own mother.

Whether drawn back to the region out of familiarity or sheer necessity, her path crossed with Lyrith’s during one of his solitary retreats. Seeing her again reawakened a storm of pain and confusion within him, a maelstrom that did not go unnoticed by the spirits that haunted him. The instant he saw her face, a bolt of agony struck through him, simultaneously awakening a terrible and furiously resentful branch of his magic.

Sensing his anguish, the spirits around him manifested his vengeance. Pooling together with the aid of this unknown power, they formed a shadowy reaper – a beast born of the forest’s wrath and the spirits’ malice – which was unleashed upon his mother. Only faintly visible to her as a misshapen shadow among the trees, the reaper tormented her constantly. Persistent whispers and unnerving chills would eventually drive her to madness – much the same to what Lyrith had experienced since the moment of his birth. Whether through her growing despair for relief or because of the weakness the spirits instilled, she unavoidably fell prey to the nether creatures, fleeing the safety of the forest and offering herself to their darkness.

Lyrith, for his part, did not fully understand what had transpired. The quieting of his haunting during the ghosts’ focus on his mother had provided him some relief, enough that he had returned to his place in the Court (though he still harbored the pain of having seen her again). After her expiring, though, they returned to him in their normal force. They spoke of his role in her demise, some in riddles and others in cruel clarity, but he could never be certain of their truth. All the same, the weight of his mother’s fate lingered over him, a burden he could not cast off nor comprehend. Having lived so long without her, her death did not disturb him as much as he knew it should have – which cast more doubt into his heart about his true being and sense of morality.

Amid the tyranny of Malakar and his terrible creations, the prior Head of House Velanthris as well as an unfortunate number of its members also fell to the growing nether threat. With the House in abrupt disarray and desperate for guidance, its members turned to Lyrith. They saw in him not only a great and suitable raw power but also the potential to embody their ideals of chaos and primal magic. Reluctantly, Lyrith accepted the mantle of leadership, becoming the House’s newest leader – a role he carries with unease, haunted still by his past and the spirits that refuse to leave him.

Lyrith

art by dall-e